Michael Jon Carter
"I hate time travelers." Character Stat Sheet Public Information Michael Jon Carter is Booster Gold. Most people know him as the guy who saved the President during the Inauguration in 2009, or as the Co-Owner and face for Goldstar Incorporated, or because he's the front man for those Planet Herowood restaurants. Basically a lot of people know Booster Gold and Booster Gold has worked hard to keep it that way. Since joining the Justice League, he has worked hard to keep them in the spotlight too, being their face with the media whether they really want him there or not. History 'Your Future! His Past!' ' ''Booster Gold! The world's greatest superhero of the year 2465 who came back in time to save his past, and '''our' future!'' ' Truth: Okay, so some of that might be made up. Okay fine a '''lot' of it might be made up. See back home in the future I was nobody, and the son of nobodies. My parents lived in Gotham, they had me and my sister (we're twins) and things were pretty alright but we weren't anyone. I mean I was a football guy, and pretty popular in school, but I was going to Gotham High, the real movers and shakers went to Redacted. My Mom, and my sis Michelle, they were okay with being normal, not my Dad and me though. We wanted to be somebodies. Unfortunately Dad's way of becoming somebody was gambling. He got in deep with the sharks and ran off with all our money rather than have them tune up his knees. Fortunately I talked the sharks into a payment plan and did some work for them to help pay Dad's debts, but we were still sort of screwed, we moved out of the okay part of Gotham and into the bad part. Fortunately there was a ray of light in the form of a football scholarship for me. I got a full ride to Gotham U and was their starting QB, which was awesome, but it paid jack (yeah, not supposed to talk about the future but, yeah in my future college athletes still don't get paid jack) and I was living and hanging out with these rich kids down from Bristol who had it all. So, like Dad, I started betting, just on my own games. I did okay, paid off the sharks and then I just started doing it for me. Which was a bad call because part way through my second year at Gotham U they noticed all the money I was throwing around and I got caught. I ended up doing time for it too, fraud, a year and a half. It sucked and when I got out I was nobody again. Since people hated me in Gotham I moved up to Metropolis and got a job as the night janitor at the Superhero Museum. It was quiet and lame, but it gave me time to think and to learn all about 21st Century Superheroes. They were like gods back then and it killed me that none of them ever cashed in on it all. About that time they got Rip Hunter's time sphere in the museum, it was deactivated of course, but it gave me an idea, what if I went back in time to the 21st Century? What if I was one of those heroes? The plan took some time to get together at first I thought about using my natural athleticism to be a hero like Batman or the Green Arrow, but archery turned out to be really hard and I was no ninja. Fortunately the museum had some nice toys like a strength enhancing suit, a Justice Legion flight ring, some power gauntlets and a force field belt. I got one of the tech nerds to show me how the security bots at the museum worked, and I was able to reprogram the one who followed me around to be my accomplice. I scored the suit, the ring, the bracers and and belt, and went to work. Skeets, my new droid friend helped me figure out the time sphere, and over a few months of borrowing my future gear I got the parts I needed to make it work again. Just in time too, the cops and some of the local heroes were closing in on my part thefts so it was just ahead of them I jumped into the sphere and headed for the 21st century. 'Booster's Big Debut!' ' ''Arriving in a flash of light in 2009, Booster Gold saved the President and his family during his inaugural address from the villain known as Chiller. Earning the gratitude of the nation and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Despite invitations to join teams like the Justice League and Stormwatch Booster Gold chooses to go it on his own, showing up in the nick of time all over the country. When he's not saving the world he's sharing his story on National TV or showing up on the red carpet with A-List celebrities or working with his company Goldstar Inc, to make a better tomorrow for all mankind. ' Truth: Okay, so most of this is made up too. So Skeets and I jumped back to the 21st Century, but we didn't jump to the inauguration. I jumped in the year before. The Inauguration was always going to be my big debut, but you can't just jump into these things you need to plan if you're going to make the most of it. So I cashed in some gold I brought back from the future and like Biff in Back to the Future II did some betting. Most of it with shady guys to keep off the radar, earned myself some money and basically got to know the century, how its people ticked, what they liked, how they communicated then I made my debut. The flash of light? Just smoke and mirrors, I was there the whole time, then I zipped in front of the Prez and his family and threw up my force field saving the day, then ripped Chiller's gear off of him with the tractor beams on my wrist guns and the secret service took it from there. Best thing was Skeets was able to get it all on tape and post it to Youtube and kick off the #Whoisboostergold? hashtag. There were questions from the government of course and some of them, mostly Waller, wanted me locked up, but by then people and the press wanted to know all about me and in the end they let me go. Though Waller did find my timesphere. After that I did a spot on the Cat Grant show, made some friends in the green room and started making the rounds of the parties, while using my knowledge of the future to make some investments with my money and show up to save the day at some big deal events. The hero team thing? That was totally made up. I did reach out to the Justice League but they turned me down and gave me a lecture on the dangers of time travel. I didn't even try with Stormwatch, because I knew Bendix was a nut job, didn't stop him from trying to recruit me though. Ditto with I.O. Also Lex Luthor. Oh and that visit from Majestic wasn't much fun either. I either lied or dealed my way out of each of those little problems until, I ran into some Intergang guys who tried to grab Skeets and their Apokolips tech was enough to damage my suit. I beat them, but my suit was messed up and I needed someone to fix it, Bruce Wayne, Jacob Marlowe, Lex Luthor and Majestic were all out of the question so I went to the super genius I knew could help, Ted Kord. 'Best Friends for Life & A Leaguer at Last' '''No hero can go it alone forever, not even Booster Gold. So, teaming up with the Blue Beetle, the two heroes took down crime across the country as America's other dynamic duo. Then following the mass breakout from the Slab, they took down in later and were invited to join the Justice League.' So Ted helps me with the suit, and after (gasp!) he reveals that he's really the Blue Beetle, we start fighting crime together. It's awesome and Ted's a really great guy, the first hero from this century not to look down on me really and that means a lot. Anyhow we work together on the business side too and Goldstar Inc really starts to take off when it starts partnering with Kord Industries on some serious tech deals. The IPO goes well and suddenly I'm rich as well as famous. Life is good and it's around this point I start to think about how to get my timesphere back and bring some these riches home to the future. Fortunately other things came up to stop me from trying to break into ARGUS to get it back. I've gotten to know Waller better since then and you do not screw the Wall. Those other thing that came up? Oh, just the Joker breaking people out of the Slab. This was the first time I really got hit by how my actions were making changes. Skeets had none of this stuff on file, but then I guess when you stop the President from being assasinated, it's going to make waves. Anyhow Ted and I we suited up and went out to track down the escapees and bring them to justice, and someone, not saying who, may have leaked it that we were doing it as part of the Justice League. So after it all said and done the JLA came to us about the rumours and we were able to make our pitch to join the team. It was a hell of a pitch I have to say because they let us in. Actually they mostly wanted Ted, but we were a package deal so they had to take me, even if I did end up a second stringer for a long while. Still, the big leagues is the big leagues and I was on the team. 'A Doomsday By Any Other Name' As part of the Justice League Booster battled Doomsday, but the killer of Superman was too much for even Booster Gold to handle. Wounded in the battle with the alien monster he named, Booster took a little R&R to get his strength back and of course mourn his friend and ally Superman Truth: So I was part of the team, even as a reservist I was able to parlay that into some good deals for Goldstar Inc. Then in 2010, a monster came to Earth. Big, grey nasty, it didn't have a name until I gave it one: Doomsday. Guess it proved a little too accurate because Doomsday ripped through the JLA, Stormwatch and killed Superman. Let me say that again, it killed Superman. That was not supposed to happen. I knew about the monster, I'll admit that, but Superman won in my timeline. Anyhow. Things were changing and this was a whole lot less of a game. The battle with Doomsday left me beat up and most of my suit ruined beyond what I could fix up, but I still showed up to help the Justice League take down the first Injustice League. After that though I was pretty close to spent and I took a little vacation only to find that while I was away my agent Dirk Davis who had been my partner when I founded Goldstar Inc, cleaned me out. So after getting transported home by the JLA, I had some money left but not much, and when the whole betrayal came out my stock price went into the toilet. By the end of it all I was pretty much living in my site for the first planet Herowood, and was down to only one employee, Teresa Collins. Who, for some reason really believed in me. Of course that's when I screwed things up. Not me, me, but another me from an alternate version of my future, yeah I know, it makes my head hurt to think about too, and he went by the stupidest name ever, Perforated Man. We battled, and I won and he went to jail and I got his suit, which had built in time travel tech. I used the tech to travel back to the 25th Century and thought about staying there, but for all changes I'd made to things, the world knew Booster Gold, but Michael Jon Carter was still a crook who stole a time sphere, and so the only person happy to see me was Michelle. We talked for a long time and she told me she was proud of the work I was doing in the past as Booster, and encouraged me to go back. So I did, but I promised to come back and give her a cut of my action. I'd have taken her with me but she met a guy and it was serious and I didn't want to mess it up for her. I kick myself for not taking her every day. 'Time-y Whime-y Adventures' Truth: There's no spin for this section because, hey, as far as the world's concerned it never happened. So, you've got a time machine. What's the first thing you try to do? Well other than stop Hitler? Save Superman. And I tried, 52 times, none of them worked, it was like fate was working against me, and really it was. On time 53, I collapsed when I got to the past again, and Rip Hunter showed up and dragged me into his Time Sphere. Apparently why evil me was evil was the Time Suit was unstable and the equipment slowly irradiated its user, causing something that Rip dubbed Temporal Leprosy, which yes, is as bad as it sounds. So while I was trying to strip out of the suit as fast as I could, Rip injected me with some sort high-tech (even for my century) cure. Once all that was out of the way, he explained to me the idea of fixed points in time, and how things were changing across the multiverse on a temporal level heading towards a big unknown and that more or more points in time were becoming fixed. What happened after that? I literally cannot talk about it. Let's just say we did a lot and I'm glad that cure he hit me with worked better than botox as far as aging goes. The short version was that Rip and I tried to figure out what was coming and generally failed miserably. Rip being the veteran time traveler kept trying, I went back to being me. 'Booster's Back Baby!' Booster Gold returns to duty as a member of the Justice League in the midst of mad scientist Kaizen Gamorra's attacks on London, Moscow and Star City. The battle of Star City was filmed by his robot Skeets and when it was released on his website, it showed the world why they should be glad they've got Booster Gold and the Justice League looking out for them. '''Following his triumphant return Booster seemed to be everywhere, saving the day, and staying in the spotlight, not to mention celebrating the return of Superman with the grand opening of his Planet Herowood franchise, a powerful and flavourful celebration of Earth's other great Superhero. Mention this article and get 50% your first order of Superfries at your local Planet Herowood. Planet Herowood, your place for Super good food! So it's hard to define time when you time travel, but I started back to living in the now around the time that Gamorra guy sent his army of clones to level Star City. I helped out in a big way there, and thanks to Skeets' excellent videography, my star was rising again. So it was back to the usual splitting my time between Goldstar Inc which Teresa had been taking care of for me and doing all the little side gigs I could get into (commercials, re-starting up the toy and comic lines again). The came Mongul and his War World which was a big deal, and Superman came back, well he was already back from the dead (wasn't me) but got his powers back. It was a pretty great moment for the League, and a great time to finally launch my hero themed restaurants. Everyone was in a great mood so they all showed up to the grand opening of our flagship store in Metropolis, and after that getting other spots open was easy. 2013 sees President Merlyn elected, and as much as I enjoy partying with his son Tommy and his buddy Oliver Queen, I was for the other guy. After all I saved that guy's life, but apparently the Booster Bump didn't do it for him. However, I had bigger things to worry about in 2013 than politics. 'The Merge' The exact events of the Merge are still being worked out, but there can be little doubt that a hero the calibre of Booster Gold played a big part in saving both worlds, even if we don't have footage of the deeds themselves. Remember that big event Rip and I were looking into, it began. It started with dimensional distortions, naturally the Justice League came to me looking for someone to blame. Which, to be fair, was probably justified, but they pretty quickly cleared my name. After they moved on to other possible causes, Rip showed up like Doc Brown all 'Booster it's the Merge! We have to do something about the Merge!'. So I hopped in the Time Sphere for some more time-y whime-y adventures. Remember how the death of Superman was a fixed point in time. Yeah, the Merge... even more so. We didn't have a chance, but we kept banging our heads against the wall until it sunk in, this was going to happen and EVERYTHING was going to change. We panicked, I wanted to save Michelle, Rip wouldn't let me use the sphere to do it, he took me to Ohio to get this guy named Daniel Carter, who apparently was my great-great-great grandfather or something. Turns out Rip wasn't the only one who had the same idea. Evil Me and Chiller, had broken out of prison and got there first. Chiller had shape shifted into Daniel and so he got the drop on Rip, then Evil Me, tried to take my (well his) suit back. We fought and while we were fighting Chiller overheard why Daniel was important to me, and that was all he needed, he kicked open the door to the room they were keeping him in froze him to death on the spot. Evil Me vanished, Rip vanished, the Time Sphere vanished then I vanished. Except like the rest of them I wasn't gone gone. The suit's time machine saved me and then Fate took a hand. Doctor Fate that is. Despite currently trying to keep two realities from Merging, he had brought me to the Tower of Fate, or maybe he just outsourced it to Zee, or Raven, or one of the other guys hanging around getting chanty in the Tower. Anyhow they were busy, but I saw some things that I'm not really going to forget so once in my life I just shut up. My brain had just entirely too much to deal with. I'm not sure how long I was in the Tower, but days? Weeks? It's all blurry, but after Fate was done doing Fate stuff he came to me. We talked, you see Chiller when he killed Daniel he killed the Carter Heroic Legacy or something like that and despite the massive changes to the world brought about by the Merge that was still important. I honestly didn't care, all I could hear was not only the future I knew gone, but Chiller had killed my entire family, including Michelle. I begged Fate to change things, trade me for her if he had to, just get her back. Fate said no. It was too late, I was able to survive because I had the suit and because I was in the Tower, everyone else, Rip, Michelle, Evil Me, all gone. I left the Tower then, my existence be damned. Fortunately the suit was keeping me in time. I went to Teresa and signed over the company, went to Beetle and told him about it all, then I went to go kill Chiller. It never happened, he was gone, not like the others, but hiding, he's a shape shifter, so, he's good at that. I found some other criminals though and I beat the crap out of them. Though the suit was losing power, and then it began to stop working, then I began to start getting all Marty McFly with the fading out of existence. Sure that sounded like a good idea when I first flew out of the Tower, but after a little bit of being alive I kind of wanted to stay that way. So I went back to Fate. He was waiting, he carried on with what he was trying to tell me the Carter Legacy was important and while Dan, Michelle and the others were gone. I was here, and I could fill Dan's place in the grand scheme of things, which sounded like a good deal, but naturally there was a catch. See Fate was busy well being Doctor Fate but there were a lot of little holes to patch up in the foundations of reality, and he wanted me to help patch them and in return, I'd get to exist. Seemed like a good deal, when he put it that way. I signed on. Of course there was another catch, and that was to help keep reality solid I had to stop bending time which also meant stopping talking about the future, as well as some of the jobs Fate would be getting me to do. And because Fate, for some reason didn't believe I could keep my mouth shut he put a spell on me that stopped me from talking about it. Which sucks, but for you too, because that means you don't get to hear the cool stuff that happened afterwards, how Fate and that Strange guy with the help of a smoking Red Head, a bevy of Jailbait Blondes, and this bratty girl, patched the whole of reality back up. After that was done, I was apparently good, so I got out of the Tower and my suit, the old one I stole from Evil Me fell apart. Right. No power, no time protection. 'After' After losing his previous suit in the Merge. Booster Gold tried a couple of variants, while he helped rebuild our world and battled evil alongside the Justice League. While the first two suits didn't quite work out, the third, thanks to the tech geniuses at Kord Industries, Wayne Tech, Queen Industries and of course the Wyvern Corporation, was just right. Now Booster is back and better than ever ready to take on the challenges of our Merged worlds alongside his allies like the incomparable Blue Beetle and the Justice League. So fortunately my Legion of Super-Heroes flight ring is made of Valorium* and so it stuck around or it would have been a long walk to Metropolis from Ivy Town. Also flying sucks without a force field. I did the rounds of my friends, saw Ted, checked in with the Justice League, paid my respects to Flash, and caught up with Teresa. She, fortunately, is understanding so she agreed to give my company back. Well, actually, she agreed to give me half, pointing out this was the second time I had almost lost everything and damn it, she'd put too much work into it to let me screw it. So, yeah, I ended up with a partner, I asked Ted to help talk her out of it, he just laughed. Jerk. After that, job one was to get me a new suit. Well, job two. Job one was to rebuild Skeets, who yeah I know I didn't talk about much in this, but the little guy is my sidekick, the Robin to my Batman (stop scowling, Bats, I mean I'm like you, not am you). Anyhow new suits, we tried a clunky one for a bit, it was sort of buggy, then Doctor Soo from STAR Labs created this magnetic one, which was more in the ballpark but not quite up to the 'Gold standard'. Fortunately, my fame paid off and billionaire industrialist James Wyvern saved the day, providing me with the tech to make a final suit that'd be up to the rigours of crime fighting with the Justice League. So, that's about it. My past is gone and only my future remains, living in the now, a god like superhero protecting his adoptive home. You know, when I put it that way me and Supes have a lot in common... What? Stop looking at me like that... *The Nth Metal of the 31st Century. How'd a ring from the 31st Century end up in the 25th? Think I'm the only time traveller? Personality Self-Promoter - If a hero saves the day and nobody's around to Tweet about it does anyone give a crap? Heck no. And really what's so bad about letting the world see what we heroes do? I mean is it any different than what the rest of the world does snapping selfies, posting their food on the web, celebs releasing sex tapes, and generally being famous for being famous. Oh wait it is, I''' actually save people, so if the rest of the world's getting paid, why shouldn't I? '''Secretive - Okay some things aren't for public consumption and I'm not talking leaked nude photos here. The fragility of time and reality, the mind bending weird crap that oozes through the gaps between our worlds, people don't need to see that, and I literally can't talk about it. So, yeah, I do put in a lot of time off camera to save the world, and it sucks that nobody freaking knows, but really it's better that way. Greedy - Sometimes I take the quick and easy road, and if you've seen Star Wars you know that most often leads to the Darkside. It's not that I don't see the problems it's just I want what I get buy doing it more. I mean, you see a big bag of money on the ground and there's nobody around to see you, you going to just walk way from it? If so you're a stronger man than me. Compassionate - Yeah, I'm greedy, but it doesn't mean I don't want to share what I've got with people. I mean, I give to charity, I help out my friends (though granted a lot of my friends are royalty or are already super rich) but anyhow, I do help. Oh, also I save people's lives. I don't have to do that. I could just sit at home and count my money. Also, I'm always going to be there for my real friends like Ted or Teresa, and yes, the Justice League too, I just might bitch about it a lot afterwards. Work in Progress - Got to admit if you look at me back in the 25th Century I was way more of a dick bag than I am today. I cheated, I stole, I was basically a hair shy of being a supervillain. Now though, while some of these gigs I do are as easy as stealing, I don't steal and like the rest of the JLA I don't kill (though I may make an exception for Chiller) but anyhow what I'm saying is I'm growing as a person, even if most people would like to see it happen a whole lot faster. Logs Category:DC Features Category:Earth-24 Character Category:Justice League Category:Wealthy Category:Celebrity Category:Humans Category:Regular Characters Category:Intellect Category:Arrested or Slowed Aging Category:Applying Characters